my opinion on...

Okay, so because you are reading this in my "Crunchy Mama" blog, you know I am about to get real opinionated. I have another blog and that one is more for my revelations in daily life. This one is to type about the vast sea of knowledge and inspiration that comes with living the crunchy life.
I noticed something yesterday. My kids do not depend on me to give them knowledge. A good student waits for a teacher to tell them what to do. I was a good student. My teachers always loved me when I was growing up. If it were not for the escalating drug addiction, I might have even have been a super star student. But my kids, they are not good students. They are not good at anything that lends itself to being "schoolish."
One memory sums up learning in school up for me. When I was in eighth grade I had my first year of history. We moved to a new town and I had never had history in my old school. It was taught by a very likable, yet very dry teacher. When he announced that a quiz would be coming up I would begin studying right away. I studied my notes from class and the textbook. I never got good quiz grades in that class. I tried so hard to. I never knew what the teacher wanted. And that was the game... not to study what was important to me, but to try to determine what the teacher found important and study that.
My kids have tried a few times to please me in this way. They tried to be intellectually dependent on me. I, the teacher(and of course being the expert) have been taught that good people wait for experts to tell them what to do.
So you can believe my shock when I realized that homeschooling was producing different results. It was strange and interesting to see a child seeking out information without being given the topic or subject. It seemed silly to me to stop him from researching a certain species of penguin so that we could "do" school.
I have read and believe that each homeschooling family thrives under different types of models. I am sure, however, that all kids are born with an instinctual desire to learn(not in the way the schools teach, though). It is awesome to watch a toddler try to discover how to walk without being taught. My kids all learned to talk without being taught. I know some parents do teach their kids how to say words, but even if they didn't, their child would learn to talk. Kids have a natural instinct and it is to learn and discover.
I know a few little boys who went to kindergarten excited. By the end of the year they hated school. The system we have set up for kids does not work. I have actually heard the argument that "if we don't send our kid(s) to school, how will they be prepared for the harsh, cold world?" So now our reasons for sending kids to school is so that they get used to being bullied and maybe even learning how to bully early on? What about to learn?
John Holt said this as he accepted the award for New York City Teacher of the Year(he won that 2 years in a row):
"I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics class or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders."
Do I discard everything I learned while in school? No, but the truth is that I would have learned those things anyway. I remember that when I am with my own. I want to expose them to everything and then let them decide what to excel in.
Do I let me kids have the run of the house all day long? Nope. Here's what we do and they love it and thrive on it...
I am a firm believer in the Charlotte Mason approach to learning. We never spend more than 15-20 minutes on any given topic. The point where he begins twirling his pencils is when we move on. I fill his workbox(a workbox is a fun way to bless my kiddies and let them be independant, I will explain the workbox system in my next blog) each night with what he needs for an education and he gets to work the next day. I fill it with the great books, great art, and great poetry of the past. He has a strong desire to learn to read and write properly so we are working on those things during the elementary years. He loves math and we found a very "schoolish" math works best for him so we use that. This particular Thing(Thing 1) is very interested in geography and science so several times a week we do projects and experiments and he keeps his findings in his notebook.
I pick out the books that I read to him and he picks out the books that he reads to me. I reserve the right to veto a book just like I reserve the right to veto candy for dinner. Because early on we began reading a type of book(ones without pictures), he enjoys those books now and prefers them. My little ones are growing up the same way.
Thing 1 knows what he has to do to reach his goals. I lay them out for him in a weekly schedule. It is up to him to finish the work in the way it works best for him. He has access to dictionaries, educational movies and documentaries, and we visit the library once a week.
Thing 2 is learning pretty much on his own. He has his own shelf full of books and workbooks. Ones that were a big hit with our family the first time around. He works through his stuff quicker than I could ever assign anything.
Chris and I set up the atmosphere and the kids take advantage. There's no coercion, no bribing(learning is it's own reward) and no punishment involved in learning.
That's it for now... thank you for reading.
Have a wonderful day!
Love,
Jackie